Paranormal Activity AUReview

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The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

By Patrick Kolan

I'll admit it – I was shaken. Generally, I view most horror films these days with a certain clinical detachment that comes with an overdose of gore and a clockwork metering of shock-tactic thrills – most of them recycled and clichéd. Suspense is often forgone for easy scares at the expense of a jumpy audience. Not so with Paranormal Activity – or not entirely, at the very least.

Directed by mostly unknown Oren Peli to apparently tackle his fear of the subject matter, what we have here is a horror film that pushes the genre in a new direction for the YouTube generation; a handicam recount of supposed (but clearly staged) events in a suburban American home. The scene is set with a stark 'thank you' to the family of the party involved, and then it's on with the spectacle. No titles, precious little in the way of overt post-production effects – just a blow-by-blow tale of a genuinely frightening demonic haunting.

And it's accurately handled, too – if such a thing could be said of a supernatural subject matter. While it's a stretch to say that the finale is plausible, the story is played out with a level of sincerity that really gets under your skin. The build-up is slow and the payoff is immediate at the end.

Check out the trailer for Paranormal Activity by clicking above.

The two lead characters, the well-meaning boyfriend Mikah and his guilt-plagued partner Katie (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat playing themselves), come across as realistic and sympathetic enough to make their eventual struggle one you'll care about. You won't want to see either of them get mangled like the typical two-dimensional teenager in a slasher. You get a convincing insight into their lives and psyches and that just makes it all the scarier.

Realism is the key in a film like this – akin to Rec, The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield – is in the amateur, off-the-cuff camerawork. Brands that fall into shot (the unintended ones, anyway) are blurred out as they might be if this were aired on television, and the ad-lib approach to the dialogue gives the delivery and reactions a naturalism that draws you in.

In fact, the performances really do stand out in Paranormal Activity; the lead pair play off each other very well, and their quick reactions and emotions exude the same kind of sincerity that pushes Paranormal Activity into a higher threshold of horror film.

Clever use of time-lapse photography, as well as a slow but building thrummmm sound during moments leading up to the activity are subtle but effective tools at building suspense without breaking out of the scene. Thuds and crashes, screams and footfalls are sudden enough to keep you on edge, but never falling to predictability, either – which is tricky to do in a horror film of this nature.

When Micah begins filming the paranormal activities in their house, things get ugly.

Paranormal Activity does sell itself short in a number of ways. For a single-camera story, told through the perspective of whoever is holding the camera at the time, sudden jumps in perspective to 'other' cameras immediately spoils the 'actual events' set up. That's a real shame; if the filmmakers had persisted, choosing to stick solely with a single point of view at all times, the illusion would've held. As it is, it still manages to captivate if not convince.

To be certain, horror aficionados will decry Exorcist-inspired moments or the somewhat bubble-brained motivations of the Micah in the face of what is clearly a malevolent force beyond his reckoning. Frankly, that's spot-on – Paranormal Activity does, particularly in the final act, start to drift into unreality, further diluting the delicate illusion of two people, one camera and a nasty presence in their house.

Yet, right up to the credits-free ending, Paranormal Activity remains a harrowing experience and it has a certain integrity that a lot of films in general lack these days. The suspense that's missing from so many horror films is there – almost overwhelming some of the attending media at the screening. It's a genuinely scary film –and that's a rare thing to accomplish in front of today's blase, switched-off audiences.